What is the most pretentious thing you've seen someone do?

[kinzarose]

Inspired by another thread. When I was at university there was an older lady who thought she was vair posh, was very keen to have her designer labels on display and loved name dropping brands into conversation. We had a group tutorial over lunch once, so we all ate together. This woman took a two foot (yes, literally) wooden salt and pepper mill out of her bag, stood up and started grinding pepper onto the shop bought sandwich she had with her. It was just the most pretentious thing ever, she was a "food snob" apparently 🤣

My friend was mortified when her 5 year old told his friend mum that he only ate home made pesto not the stuff from a jar 😁

@Suddenlyfamily5

My MIL telling me about her trousseau.

A trousseau was a normal thing though, in the past.

Hearing a cousin explain to a very down to earth friend that her glasses were not prescription and she was wearing them 'for fashion'.

DP, who is usually the most down to earth person I know, once commented 'I mean, I know absolutely nothing about stained glass, but even I can identify 15th century Norwich school, ffs.'

The long pause afterwards was only broken by me laughing so hard at his pretentious wankery that I nearly fell out of bed. '15th century Norwich school?' is now a phrase in our house.

@ChristmasJumpers

My friend's wife (he is very well off but quite unassuming, she has married into the money and loves it) was planning their wedding and telling us they wanted crisp white linen on the tables because "glitter is so tacky". This came 6 months after she came to our wedding, a winter wonderland theme, complete with glittery table cloths...

p.s. they looked beautiful at ours, not tacky at all!

Some friends were getting married about a year after they'd come to our wedding (in the 1980s). I asked what sort of dress she was looking for & she said, "Something simple & elegant - I can't stand those big meringuey things." Yeeeees, that would be an apt description of my own fashionable-in-the-80s wedding dress.

@SW1amp

Someone on our street has a CBE, and insists on using it all the time on our whatsapp group

Eg
“Hello everyone. Does anyone have a couple of spare visitors parking permits I could buy as we have workmen here today
Thanks,
Peter Jones CBE (number 63)”

😂😂😂😂

My friend came round for a drink in the garden during lockdown. She brought her own glass and Pimms with her- all fine. She put her glass and bottle on the table, then she said, "DH darling, will you come and pour my drink?" To which he dutifully came over from where he was chatting to my DH and poured her drink. The mind boggles!

A snooty relative of my DH who described me as a "social climber" because my parents are working class and DH's are middle class.

@WalkingOnTheCracks That's hilarious. I bet she loved it

@Lonelymum21

Dd6 announced "Mama, everytime you go to M&S I want you to buy me an Eton mess because that's my favourite".

We live on a rough council estate. We were in Marks and Spencer spending our Marcus Rashford vouchers to feel a bit fancy at Christmas and she chose one of those individual Eton mess pots. She calls it M&S because that's what the sign says and calls me Mama because of the ABBA song.

I'm as common as muck and hearing that sentence come out of her mouth made me feel so proud! My little posh princess

Everything about that story is lovely! I have tears in my eyes.

Very general one - but people who write about themselves in the third person on LinkedIn. Also - people who add MA/MSc etcetera. I've seen this many times.

A woman I know told me her DH was in plastics - I thought it was some kind of engineering, so asked her about his role (out politeness, I really didn't care). She informed me, rather snootily, that no, he was a plastic surgeon.

She didn't have a job herself, but obviously lived vicariously through Dr Plastic Fantastic.

Another woman I know used to refer to her husband as Dr rather than his first name, as normal people do. We used to ask her how Dave was, just out of wicknedness to get her to say Dr

A trousseau was a normal thing though, in the past

Although others may have referred to it as their 'bottom drawer'

@Lonelymum21

Dd6 announced "Mama, everytime you go to M&S I want you to buy me an Eton mess because that's my favourite".

We live on a rough council estate. We were in Marks and Spencer spending our Marcus Rashford vouchers to feel a bit fancy at Christmas and she chose one of those individual Eton mess pots. She calls it M&S because that's what the sign says and calls me Mama because of the ABBA song.

I'm as common as muck and hearing that sentence come out of her mouth made me feel so proud! My little posh princess

You win. You win this entire thread.

That's such a fab story and your little girl deserves all the Eton Messes in the world. She sounds amazing

@UltimateBugKilla maybe they'd just won some money or inherited?

Someone I know is renting a flat in a relatively posh area . It's a flat in a building which has a "xxxxx court" name. If I accidentally referred to her flat as "your flat " she would always correct me and say "Apartment, it's an apartment". Even on her address she would always say 'Apartment xx' not 'Flat xx' even though I've seen her neighbours using "Flat" on their mail. This same lady does not like football and Spain because she thinks "its working class people that like football " and "its working class people who go to spain". So she doesn't want to go to Spain, ever

@Ionlydomassiveones

Round where I live - buying period properties and turning them into modern grey and glass monstrosities with huge, naff concrete fountains and fake grass.

I just walked past one of these. I muttered to myself "god that house has changed, why are people putting this god awful shite grey cladding on these lovely houses". I didn't see the owner chatting to the neighbour in his neighbours garden.

It was a beautiful house too, now looks shit. Who actually thinks a grey house is a good look?

no trousseau was your going away outfit bottom drawer was items you collected like sheets towels etc ready for your first home

My OH used to be a well-known Labour MPs postal worker. One day he had to laugh when he heard her son called her Mater instead of Mum.

@AdoptedBumpkin

Very general one - but people who write about themselves in the third person on LinkedIn. Also - people who add MA/MSc etcetera. I've seen this many times.

I'm an ex headteacher (secondary) and it used to make me cackle whenever I saw that a colleague had got them to paint NPQH after their name on the school sign.

Similarly (Hons) after their BA or BSc - hardly any degrees aren't honours and this has been the case all my adult life (I'm 63). Also, nobody cares.

@labazslovesliving

no trousseau was your going away outfit bottom drawer was items you collected like sheets towels etc ready for your first home

No it wasn’t

www.brides.com/what-is-a-bridal-trousseau-1860910

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/dictionary.cambridge.org/amp/english/trousseau

@ninnynonny

Our 21 year old DS is definitely on the pretentious side. He's a lovely young man but doing Politics and Philosophy at university has turned into an existential wreck. One of his classics was 'If Oscar Wilde was alive, what great friends we'd be...'

OMG, I love your DS for that! My eldest DD attempted to assume some airs and graces whilst a fresher at Cambridge. Her college has a high public school intake and DD comes from a fairly shitty comprehensive. We came to visit and she addressed us as Mummy and Daddy(she never called us that even as a toddler!). After a quiet word of sisterly affection from our youngest DD which included "a knob" and "pretentious twat" we were reverted to Mum and Dad.

@VickyEadieofThigh

I think my university awarded degrees without honours as the level below a third?
I remember one person I knew got an un-hons degreee for not completing the year abroad for a language degree
She passed all her exams but wasn’t full honourable

@HighlandCowbag

On holiday years ago with now dh, his parents, his nephew and my dd. Mate of dhs booked same resort with his 2 teenagers and last minute, his latest girlfriend invited herself along.

Walking into the hotel bar to meet us she eye balled dd in her pushchair, and nephew playing with cars along the table looked all slapped arsed and exclaimed 'oh, I didn't realise it was a faaamily holiday, I thought it would be cultural'. It was a resort on a greek island not particularly known for its culture.

And later that night, the teenage dd of dhs mate was flapping a fleecey throw around getting snuggled up in it. Girlfriend 'ooh careful dahling it's a cashmere pashmina'.

'Its a cashmere paaashminaaa' has become an actual phrase in this house if someone is being a pretentious knob. I say it a lot to teenage dd who is adamant we are middle class when we are actually working class. Apparently getting mealdeals from M and S, having 2 fat ponies and me being at uni means we are. We definitely aren't.

you're definitely middle class

@EdgeOfTheSky

I like Ptolemy as a name but the spelling makes it hard to use, I think.

When I gave birth to ds, the lady in the bed opposite called her baby Ptolemy. The look on the midwives face was priceless.